[inaebigfoot]

I have two 5040 units. I successfully upgraded one unit with dual Maxtor 250gb ata 133 HD's. Works perfectly. My second unit was upgraded using dual Seagate 200gb ata 100 HD's. The upgrade was successful, except the machine is not quickly responsive to the remote. I'm having to press the buttons several times, holding them down, waving them in front of the machine, with very poor responsiveness. I'm positive it is not the remote or batteries, because the same exact remote works very well on the downstairs unit with the Maxtor HD's.


Has anyone had a similar experience with dual Seagate 200gb ata 100's? My next step is to swap machines with the drives to rule out the actual machine. My guess is that there is something different about the HD's. Would ata 100 vs ata 133 make a difference?


Thanks in advance,

Tony

 

[rm -rf *.*]

Might want to open the dual Seagate unit back up and check the IR & Blue Laser PCB mounted to the front of the case to see if it might have gotten accidentally bumped out alignment. Waving the remote around in front of the RTV while holding down a key is more the situation that one would experience if the IR Transceiver on the ReplayTV was partially obscured.

 

[icecow]

how long did you use the replaytv with the original drive before you upgraded?

 

[inaebigfoot]

I waited about a year, and it was now time to get more storage.

 

[l8er]

Quote:

Originally posted by inaebigfoot Would ata 100 vs ata 133 make a difference?

I would think not. The controller in the ReplayTV may not even be ATA 133.


I have some 200 GB Seagate drives, but haven't had the time to test them in a ReplayTV yet. I hope there's not some kind of compatibility problem with them.

 

[sfhub]

When you remove the drive, you had to move the wires which connect

the IR and blue LED to the mainboard. That could have jarred the

mechanism or the connector. Try opening the unit up and adjusting

those areas as suggested above.

 

[jackshakes]

I'm pretty sure the IDE controller in the replay is ATA100 ... so that wouldn't make a difference.


fwiw ... I upgraded my 5504 with a single seagate 200Gig drive (8MB Cache) and my menu response time has actually improved.


How much cache are in the seagates?


I tend to agree with the other guys who say it's probably an issue with the IR receiver in the case ... sounds like it's just not getting the signal.


If you want to confirm it's the drives, you could swap the drives in the replays for a bit and see if the same unit acts up or if the issues move with the drives.

 

[inaebigfoot]

Success!!! Thank you all for your help and suggestions. Tonight, I opened up both units, swapped the hard drives, wiggled the wires from the mainboard to the power switch/remote sensor and put the units back together. Both work like a charm!!! I'm really not sure what it was, but it doesn't look like it was the drives, since they work flawlessly in the other machine. Probably it was wiggling of the wires that made the difference.


I feel like I'm now on a roll. Hmmm, I wonder what other hacks I can do to the units... maybe I should stop while I'm ahead. Cheers to all!!!

 

[rm -rf *.*]

Quote:

Originally posted by inaebigfoot I feel like I'm now on a roll. Hmmm, I wonder what other hacks I can do to the units... maybe I should stop while I'm ahead. Cheers to all!!!

You could enable the shell and get an os prompt via the serial port and start typing in random commands, or, grab a soldering iron and try and jumper the +5VDC power to the USB port, so that you can plug in one of those flexi-superbright-LED lights when you need to fiddle around behind the RTV, or, decide to start screwing around with the completely adequate stock cooling arrangement on the units by doing completely idiotic s**t like moving the vents or reversing the fan flow direction or trying to needlessly upgrade the heat-sinks, or, extract yourself a copy of all files on p1 from the RTV-OS image, and then start randomly whacking away at it as part of some misguided and demented quest to change the 480p outputs into the ever elusive Input #4-Progressive-IN...


*sigh*


*yeah* I tend to agree with you... They're working (nearly perfectly at that) - quit now & don't futz with them - why borrow trouble?


Instead, take up raising Yaks or Emu's or work on being the first person to successfully keep a Great White Shark ALIVE while in captivity...


...or download one of the two SW packages from Womble and start making DVD's...


Ciao dude!